


Echoes

by geckoholic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Community: spn-cinema, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-27
Updated: 2011-11-27
Packaged: 2017-10-26 14:45:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/284495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/pseuds/geckoholic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They've come to Chicago for a simple monster hunt, but when they run into a demon moonlighting as serial killer it's Dean who becomes the target. After all, they've got an experience in common: Hell. - Set in Season 4, between 4.08 and 4.09.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echoes

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the movie Se7en. This is a teamwork; ash48 made a trailer for this fic, please find it [HERE](http://ash48.livejournal.com/200655.html).
> 
> Nitro26 had a first look at the full draft and made some very useful suggestions, and kalliel beta'd; once again, she poked at my weak spots mercilessly and I love her for it. ♥ Also, many thanks to ash48, who held my hand all throughout writing this fic and made sure I kept it true to the movie. And last but not least, amber1960 gave this a last read-through regarding G+S. You're all stars! All remaining mistakes are mine. 
> 
> Title is from "Echoes" by Set Your Goals.

_There's blood running down his inner thigh and it_ tickles. _Dean absently wonders how it's even possible that he feels that, how he can be able to single out such a tiny, light sensation against the white-hot sea of agony that is his whole upper body. It shouldn't even register in comparison._

_But he does feel it, and he focuses on it, uses it to try and block out the pain._

_Of course, his attempt at getting some ease doesn't go unnoticed; Alastair studies him, cocking his head to the side. "Oh no, sweetheart, no checking out. I want you with me, here." He reaches down, between Dean's legs, and wipes the blood away, licks it off his palm before he rips another strip of skin and muscle from Dean's chest, and Dean -_

\- comes awake with a stifled cry. The bright afternoon sun falling through the window of the motel room blinds him, makes him blink, and it takes him a moment to make out Sam's silhouette by the table next to the window.

Sam's looking at him, expression soft and worried, clearly biting back a comment or a question or another plea for Dean to start talking, get on with the caring and sharing so he can start to _heal_. It's been like this ever since Dean admitted to remembering hell, up in Concrete. Sam hovers, eyes Dean like he expects him to break apart at any moment and keeps mentioning "trauma" and "post-traumatic stress" as if he's hoping that, if he throws these words at Dean often enough, eventually something's going to stick and Dean will give in.

Dean glares back, annoyed, and Sam returns his attention to the laptop in front of him.

"Bobby passed us a hunt," he says. "Chicago. You up for it?"

They're currently in Alabama, just done offing the ghost of a Civil War senior officer with a temper. Dean's not really in the mood for another couple of days on the road and their last visit to Chicago isn't one he remembers fondly, but, anything to keep them busy and Sam off his case. "Big City Life? Yeah, sure, why not." He rubs his eyes, sits up. "What's it about?"

"There have been some sightings of what Bobby assumes might be a Kappa." Sam looks up to Dean, who raises his eyebrows, and continues on. "Creatures. The lore originates in Japanese folklore, but it wouldn't be the first time one's been seen outside of Japan. They start out small, pranking people and all that, but some move on to kidnapping and rape."

Sam points to the screen - apparently there's pictures - and Dean gets up from the bed to have a look. The thing looks like the bastard child of a toad and a howler monkey, which all in itself is enough to make Dean hate it. In addition to that, it caries a shield like a turtle and sports some impressive fangs.

"Woah, that's one fugly critter." And if Dean has any say it in, it's soon going to be a dead critter.

***

What Sam and Dean don't know yet is that the Kappa case is going to be a bust, and that they'll get tangled up in a different case entirely.

About the same time the brothers pack their things up in Alabama and get on their way to Illinois, there's a man walking through a dark alley, headed for the Chicago Loop. It's a cold and rainy Friday night, and no one will remember him later; he's one in a million, just one ant in a giant anthill. On his way, he runs into an old woman, and she falls, but he hurries on, unimpressed by the curses she throws his way.

Upper Madison Street, he stops in front of an old office building, cocks his head to the side, considering. In the dark, it takes him a moment to decipher the plates listing the companies and firms residing there, but he finds the name he's been looking for. He glances up the front of the building, sees an illuminated window on the third floor, nods to himself and pushes open the heavy doors to the foyer. There's a security guard standing next to the front desk who strides up to the man as soon as he enters, asking him what he's there for, telling him to leave and come back during business hours.

A flick of the man's wrist, and the security guard tumbles to the ground.

The man walks up to the elevator, presses the button for the third floor, and wipes lingering drops of rain from his jacket sleeve on his way up. With a ping, the doors open, and the man looks around until he finds the plate leading his way to "Hawthorne, Rockford & Finch, Attorneys At Law".

He smiles, doesn't much care which one he's going to find still working in the office. It doesn't matter. All three have it coming, guilty of the same sin: Peter Hawthorne, Gordon Rockford and Richard Finch are defense attorneys. The best in the city, some people say. They make a fortune by getting the rich and popular out of charges that would land everyone else in prison for a good number of years.

Come Sunday morning, the man will wake up in the underground garage of the building with blood on his hands and no recollection of what happened.

Because he wasn't the one in control of his body.

Jonah was.

***

It's not the first time they've been in Chicago, but it always amazes Dean just how much of a dump it is. Sure, the corners of the city they usually stay in don't go a long way to change his mind, but it's not like hunters can afford the Trump International.

He kills the engine in front of a motel that advertises in big, pink and baby-blue letters that it rents out by the hour and lets out a displeased huff. Sam catches it, tiny eye roll that indicates he's currently contemplating fratricide, but he doesn't say a word.

And okay, that mood his brother's in is Dean's own fault; even he's got to admit that he's been insufferable the whole drive up here. But he barely slept, couldn't stand the constant scrutiny anymore - Sam looking at him ever-so-sympathetically at all times - so he resorted to bitching. A lot.

Sam gets out of the car, mumbles something along the lines of "I'll check us in" and strides up to the motel's office without looking back. It leaves Dean with a sudden pang of guilt, but pissed Sam is easier to deal with than touchy-feely Sam and if he's really as damaged as Sam thinks? Then he's got every right to lash out once in a while.

Hell as an excuse to be a horrible person. Well, hey, that's a new one.

He watches Sam come back out of the office, waving at him to get out of the car, and complies reluctantly; his limbs feel like they weigh a ton each, a symptom of sleep-deprivation, and something about leaving the safety and comfort of the car really doesn't appeal to him right now. The sound of the engine cooling down, clicking and hissing, has always been soothing to him. Familiar when not very many things are.

Outside, he draws his jacket a little closer around his body; it's mid-November, not biting-cold yet but getting there. Alabama was warmer, and it didn't evoke memories of Daevas and demons wearing cute blondes with innocent baby sisters.

Oh yeah. Chicago's going to be _fun_.

***

By morning Sam's gotten over his prissiness and judging by the return of the concerned expression he wears almost all the time these days, he remembered that he's faced with a brother more-or-less fresh from hell.

Dean's kinda missing the icy looks from last night.

Just after dawn, they’re wading through excrement in Chicago’s sewers. Typical. Sam's busy with juggling a large map of the sewer system Bobby gave them, without touching the yucky walls too much or losing his flashlight, curses under his breath pretty much constantly, and Dean's back to wishing they'd stayed in sunnier climes. “Do you think Bobby sent us to a case involving long trips through big city canalization cause I dropped his favorite mug last week?”

“Yeah, must be all he thinks about.” While he talks, Sam's flashlight gives in to gravitation's pull and rolls out from where he had it pressed under his chin and he catches it just before it drops onto the dirty ground, groans irritatedly.

“Whatever. You gettin' hungry, too? I'm starving.”

“Sure you are.”

“Come on, we've been out here for a least an hour, and we didn't have breakfast yet. Come on. Pancakes?” says Dean, wiggles his eyebrows encouragingly.

Sam gives a long-suffering sigh, but nods. “Let's swing by the motel first, for a quick shower.”

“Dude, of course. I'm no caveman.”

They head back, shower, and then find themselves a cute little diner. It's a small, paisley affair, but way nicer than a chain could ever be. Dean ducks behind a laminated menu so he doesn’t have to watch Sam watching him. He can smell Sam’s rendezvous with their bar of soap from here; it’s like he tried to take his skin off, scrubbing with that thing.

“Their blueberry pancakes are ‘The Best in the Midwest’,” Sam notes, and Dean's not quite sure if he's genuinely impressed or just being sarcastic. When their overtly cheerful waitress sways over, Sam orders a serve for each of them.

She's halfway back to the counter and already shouting the order to the cook as a squealing teenage girl rushes into the diner. She's out of breath, face beet-red from running and panic, and if Dean had to bet he'd say she's been well on her way to completely sloshed when something spooked her bad.

“Why don't you take a deep breath, sweetie” the waitress coos. It takes a few attempts, but eventually she manages to calm the kid down some, and when asked what had upset her so much, she loudly announced to the room that she had just found a "dead dragon".

Dean mouths “Dragon?” at Sam and Sam shrugs. The drawings they saw of Kappas could fit that description, and at this stage, they've got no better leads anyway. Encouraged by a couple of bystanders, the girl's about to show her find to whoever's interested, and they join the small crowd that gathers around her.

And well, calling the creature she leads them to a dragon is giving it a little too much credit. Quite obviously, it's not a Kappa either; there's nothing supernatural about the six feet of very dead green animal that took its last breath near the dumpster of an Italian restaurant.

“It's an iguana,” Sam declares to everyone who's paying attention. A huge one, sure, and it's understandable how it scared the people in the area good and proper, but no danger to anyone. Judging by the collection of puzzled expressions around them, that's not common knowledge, and so Sam continues his biology lesson. “They're herbivores and not very dangerous unless you piss them off.”

Probably escaped from the zoo, or some private reptile enthusiast.

While Sam channels his inner geek to reassure the group further, Dean subjects the cadaver to a closer inspection. It's been dead for a few days at least, decomposing already. The rats already had their way with it, there are bits missing here and there, and Dean's no expert, but it looks a little emaciated. It doesn't look like that was the reason it died, though; his guess is that northern Illinois in winter simply isn't the place for an exotic animal like that.

After Sam convinces everyone that there really isn't anything out of the ordinary about this animal, apart from the fact that it doesn't belong here at all, the little crowd dissolves quickly until the two of them are the only one's left.

Sam pokes at the dead iguana one last time for good measure, makes a disgusted face when a couple of bugs flees from under the cadaver. “What do you think? Did that critter moonlight as our Kappa?”

“ Could be. One last sweep to be sure, then we pack and head back up south?”

***

Their second tour around the sewers proves to be as fruitless s the first, and the only reason they're still in the city the next morning is that the room's paid for until noon and Sam dug his heals in and demanded for Dean to at least try and get some rest.

He regretted that when he shot up in bed at 3 a. m., having been woken by a scream from the other bed; a scream Dean steadfastly insisted must've been coming from the TV in the next room or something. Wasn't him. Nope, no way.

Sam fell back into a light, uneasy sleep soon after that, but from what he can tell, Dean didn't go back to sleep at all. When Sam wakes, he's sitting on his bed, surrounded by three empty paper cups of coffee and two untouched bags for doughnuts and coffee rolls, pale with shadows under his eyes as dark as if he's been punched. As soon as he senses that Sam's awake, he picks up a newspaper from behind him and shoves it Sam's way.

"Article on the front page, about the dead lawyer. Might be a gig."

Sam ignores Dean's outstretched hand in favor of yawning loudly, holding a hand up in front of his mouth, but when Dean wiggles with the newspaper, growing impatient, he takes it after all.

A highly prized lawyer was killed in his office, but as gruesome as it seems, Sam doesn't get why that might be their thing and tells Dean as much.

Dean grins. "Read 'til the end. The whole room's basically drenched in sulfur. Wanna hunt a demon, Sammy?"

***

Dressed in their full-on FBI getup - suits and ties and confidence included - it's not hard to get into the dead lawyer's office. The local cops and crime scene investigators are mostly done with their work. The few leftover officers apparently assume that, if they got in, they must belong here. Chances are the place was swarming with people from all kinds of different departments for most of the day, and two more don't make much of a difference.

The office is spacious and sparsely furnished with the expensive stuff: a glass desk, leather office chair, wooden panels and paintings of different styles hung on every wall. Opposite of the desk, there’s a huge wall of cupboards with books, another set of paintings, and two TV sets - seriously, why _two?_ \- in the middle of the room, a coffee table with a couple of arm chairs arranged around it, both also glass and leather.

Between the desk and the coffee table, the bright white carpet is practically bathed in blood. In the center of the stain sits a stack of blood-soaked books. Above it the letters G-R-E-E-D are painted on the carpet in big, bloody letters, and the newspaper article didn't lie: the whole room is dusted in a thin sheen of sulfur.

Its stench hits Dean in the gut as soon as they enter the room. Sam's unbothered, but Dean's tempted to think that he smells it even more intensely because he knows it's there, sees it everywhere; it almost makes him gag.

He -

_takes a step back to admire his handiwork. She's screaming, but you can't trust that, pain thresholds are so different; some of them start yelling for their mama as soon as the knife bites into their skin, others stubbornly clench their jaw even when their insides get turned into their outsides. It doesn't make a difference anyway, Alastair told him once, secretively, like it's something he shares only with his most promising students. These reactions are fleeting, don't matter half as much as the amount of ingenuity and style you invest into getting them._

_But Dean likes it when they scream. He's never been one for the suppositional, doesn't care about abstract theories and hidden meanings; he prefers to deal with things straightforwardly. Simple. Action, reaction._

_This one managed to keep from making any noise right until he started burning her skin away bit by bit, working his way up from her thigh, meticulously taking his time to get every last square centimeter off. He's almost halfway done with that now, the white of the skin still untouched below her knees and from her chest upwards, contrasting beautifully with the red. A few stray rivulets of blood disturb the symmetry, but that's inevitable._

_He nods to himself and steps_

\- over the letters on the floor, shakes his head to get rid of the memory.

"You all right? Got kinda pale there, man." Sam reaches out for him, as if he's about to touch or even fucking _rub_ his shoulder, but he thinks better of it mid-move and lets his arm fall to his side instead.

Dean swallows once to make sure his voice is obeying him properly before answering, but it still comes out hoarse and small. "Yeah, golden. It's just... The smell."

Before Sam can push for details, Dean walks up to the desk, digs a couple of gloves out of his pocket - high-profile murder case, if someone finds their fingerprints here, they're screwed - and shuffles around in the files and documents on the desk. Not like he's expecting to find anything useful, but it's an excuse to show Sam his back without making it too obvious that he can't look him in the eye right now.

Behind him, Sam's busy with the books and crouches down to read their titles out loud; law-related bullshit Dean doesn't particularly care for. He turns back around, shrugging. "If there's been anything useful here, the police probably took it. We need to get a hold of their report."

Sam gets back up. "So you do think it's a demon?"

"Fuck yes, I do. Anything here that doesn't scream hell bitch to you?"

 

***

It will never cease to amaze Sam how easy it is to hack into a police databank. Given the kind of information they hold, they should be protected like Fort Knox, but in Sam's experience, it's more difficult to break into someone's Ebay account.

Not that he's ever done that.

Seriously.

Dean's sitting opposite him, having a staring match with a paper bag holding a now-cold double cheeseburger with fries on the side. He's the one who insisted on stopping at a drive-in; as Sam sees now, that's just his brother keeping up appearances.

He thinks about the faraway look Dean had in the dead lawyer's office and at the same time wants and doesn't want to know what he's seen, where he zoned out to.

Well, the "where" is obvious. Sam knows that the worst things he can imagine won't live up to what hell was really like, and that knowing, in this case, will be worse than wondering about it. But still, not knowing drives him crazy. He's the reason Dean went downstairs in the first place, the least he can do is share the load. Help him in any way he possibly can.

Of course it's against some obscure Winchester code of conduct to say that out loud.

A few more clicks, and Sam's in. Turns out, said dead lawyer wasn't killed as much as forced to kill himself. The pictures from the crime scene show him kneeling in front of the stack of books. He fell over when he died, and his head came to rest on top of it. Cause of death was blood loss. Someone held a gun to his head, and he carved into his side—deep. He was still holding the knife when the cops found him. The bruising at his temples suggests the muzzle of the gun . He was still holding the knife he cut himself with when the cops found him.

And that's not all. The file is linked to another murder case.

Before he clicks the link, Sam waves Dean over to show him the photos and summarizes what he just read in the autopsy report.

When he opens the second site, the pictures they're greeted with make his stomach churn.

A dark room, dirty and gritty, illuminated by the flash of the camera just enough to make out a man sitting by a diner table, slumped over, his face lying in a bowl that was still  
full when he hit it; the contents - spaghetti from the looks of it - had been spilled over. The victim is... Huge is the best description Sam can come up with. He weighs at least four hundred pounds, wearing a wife beater and too small sweatpants that barely reach his calves. His feet are bound together with some sort of cable.

And again, sulfur everywhere. Probably how the police linked the cases together in the first place.

The next photo shows the same man on the autopsy table, and the report comes to the conclusion that he was forced to eat until his belly was so full that it ripped open from the impact of the murderer - demon, Sam corrects himself - kicking him in the stomach. The coroner concludes that the whole process had gone on for at least 12 to 14 hours.

Dean lets out an angry snort. "Sick motherfucker."

"No argument there."

***

Jonah watches.

He's not very concerned about the police; the worst they can do is arrest the bodies he used, and that doesn't matter to him.

But demons talk. In fact, they are a surprisingly sociable lot, sometimes.

Even though he prefers to stay on the fringes, do his thing all on his own, Jonah's picked a few things up. Hunters, for example. He knows about hunters, and that they're more of a threat than human judiciary. Because they _know_.

So when Sam and Dean show up on his crime scene, poke around and talk about things no policeman has a clue about, Jonah gets suspicious. Time to make some inquiries, he decides.

Pretty much at the same time the brothers read through the report of the second murder, Jonah's found himself a couple of demons fresh out of the pit. Jonah himself is topside since 2006, he fought his way out of the Devil's Gate, but he doesn't know what exactly happened that night or remembers that he crossed paths with the brothers before. At least not until he's sitting down at the table of an old, haggard man possessed by a demon barely twice his age and gets told everything about the life and death and resurrection of one Dean Winchester.

There are two kinds of demons in hell. Well, strictly speaking, there are a lot more, but the simple demons furthest down in the hierarchy of the pit are divided into two groups: those who struck a deal, and those who committed sins so grave that Heaven rejected them.

Despite advertising to the contrary by certain preachers and politicians, no one gets cast into Hell for lying or fornicating anymore. Murder or rape, on the other hand, are still surefire ways to book yourself a trip downstairs.

The main difference between those who struck a deal and those who sinned is that, sometimes, the first kind gets to leave Hell; they get sent to earth as the black smoke Sam and Dean are more than familiar with. The sinners? Never. Hell is their punishment, and release back onto earth to continue as they did while alive isn't in the cards for them.

Jonah was a sinner, although he doesn't see himself as one. Had it not been for the Devil's Gate, he'd never have seen the light of day again. But it's not gratitude he feels while he contemplates Dean's fate. It's anger.

Red-hot, blood-boiling rage.

He can't understand why God would send angels into hell to save _Dean_. Of all people, Dean Winchester gets the free pass to return into his flesh-and-blood body and go on with his life as if nothing happened? It's not fair. What did he do to deserve that, what is it that qualifies him as His soldier? From what Jonah hears, he didn't lead a very devout life.

As he stumbles through the rain back to his lair, Jonah decides to put Dean to the test.

***

The place where the other murder happened is a shithole. It already looked bad in the pictures, but those didn't even begin to capture its charm.

Nobody's cleaned here in ages; there's a coat of dirt and grease thick as a finger everywhere. The floor crawls with cockroaches and other insects all over, and it reeks like a waste disposal site. Dean can also smell a faint note of puke, and, of course, the sulfur. It's much less prominent than at the last scene, and he's grateful for that - about to lose the meager contents of his stomach due to the sickening odor of human filth, but grateful.

Disgust he can deal with, it's not like dug-up corpses smell like roses.

The crime scene itself, the table, got cleaned up a bit in the process of gathering evidence, but it still blends right in with the rest of the apartment.

They look around, lift something up here, peek under there, but it's random. There are no clues. Just like the last scene, the demon didn't leave anything behind that might point them in his direction, other than the sulfur.

Suddenly, something screeches, and Dean stops dead. He looks down to his feet, and there it is: he stepped onto a rat. Its tail, to be exact.

Once upon a time, that would've caused him to jump back in aversion, but a lifetime in hell puts things into perspective. He's not cruel, though ( _at least not topside_ , a voice inside his head supplies helpfully), so he releases the animal by raising his foot enough to free it. Involuntarily, he follows its trail with the glow of his flashlight, and his eyes catch something on the floor.

There are scratches. Not from the rat, bigger. Like someone dragged something across the ground. He directs the flashlight back up to see what's right in front of him: a fridge - huge, but not too big to move. And it stands slightly askew, a little too far into the room.

"Sam, give me a hand?"

Together, they heave the fridge from the wall to see what's behind, and Dean freezes.

The word "gluttony" is smeared onto the wall, and on the ground, and in the grease and dirt and filth lies an envelope. Shiny white, not a speck of dust, with Dean's name on it.

***

The envelope contains two pieces of paper. One of them has a name and an address on it. What's on the second, Sam has no idea, because Dean refuses to show him.

"It's just nonsense, Sam," he says as he switches the car's dome light off and thrusts the envelope into his jacket pocket, a little too hard to not be telling.

"If it is, why don't you just show me?"

Dean stares at him for a moment, obviously searching for a counter argument, turns to stare out of the window when he doesn’t find one. "Fuck you."

Not much sense in keeping that argument up if Dean resorts to insults; Sam knows how to pick his battles and this isn't a fight worth having. "Do you wanna check it out? The address?"

"Course I do," says Dean, predictably.

That means it's on Sam to point out the obvious: "Could be a trap."

"Don't I know it. Let's go."

"Right now?"

Dean turns back towards him and rolls his eyes. "No, maybe sometime next week, if it doesn't mess with your schedule. Of course, right now!"

"Just saying, if we knowingly run into a trap, maybe we should at least go prepared." It's hard not to let his voice rise, bitterness and worry mixing up for a rather explosive cocktail inside Sam's chest. Hell changed Dean in many more ways than he'll admit, but it didn't make him any less reckless.

"Got the knife, got your nerdy head full of exorcisms. What more preparation are you talkin' about?"

"I don't know, Dean, catch a few hours of sleep, prepare a few salt rounds, try to find out more about the place? Anything that isn't running in there half-assed and on fumes."

"Awww, Sammy, should've told me you're tired," Dean replies, mocking, and winks at him.

Not where he's coming from, but if treating Sam like the whiny little brother is what it takes for Dean to allow himself a break, Sam's willing to play along. "Yeah, I'm beat. We'll go first thing tomorrow, okay?"

It's too easy, how fast Dean gives in, and speaks volumes about how exhausted he is. Not just tonight; all the time nowadays. Sam watches him as engages the gear, steers them back into traffic and it hits him how much older Dean looks, as if he'd aged years and not months since he died and came back.

***

You'd think that the worst part of dreaming about hell is the pain, the agony, the memory of being cut, sliced, burned, torn apart, in every way imaginable.

It's not.

What makes the difference between startling awake on a gasp and waking up bathed in his own sweat, stumbling to the bathroom, throwing up violently until his throat burns and his stomach convulses is whether or not he's been the one holding the knife.

Getting a love letter from a demon containing nothing but the words "How many?" pretty much guarantees option number two.

It could mean a number of things. Not very specific. How many of my kind did you exorcise, for example. How many years have you been a hunter. How many times did you fail, how many died. How many what-the-fuck-ever. But Dean can't help but reading it as "How many souls did you torture in hell?"

_It knows._

The thought makes him lean forward and retch again.

Leaning back onto the cold tiles of the bathtub, Dean tries to pull himself together well enough to face his brother; he's hearing noises in the main room now, which means Sam is awake and every minute Dean stays in here will make him more suspicious.

Fuck.

Dean gets up, rinses his mouth, hesitates with the hand on the doorknob. The last thing he's in the mood for right now is another lecture about accepting help and sharing his pain, but if he doesn't go out there, Sam will eventually demand to be let in and that'll just make it worse. One last deep breath, and he leaves the bathroom, steps into where his brother's waiting to assess exactly how bad it was this time.

Sam doesn't say anything, but he doesn't have to. His expression - the way his features soften when he lays eyes on Dean - communicates his feelings perfectly: worry (not his job but Dean's), pity (fuck him very much, and Dean doesn't deserve it anyway) and anger, exasperation. Sam's like Dad, quick temper and short fuse. Trying as much as he can, then getting fed up and furious.

Which is good. Dealing with him will be easier when he's reached furious. Dean's used to that, to defusing his family, that's something he can handle.

He lowers his eyes, pushes past Sam quickly and doesn't so much as glance at him again on his way back to bed.

***

Back in the day, the building might've been one of the more high-class ones in this area of the city. It's old, spacious, and whomever had it built paid attention to details; there are ornaments on the walls, and the solid wooden staircase must've been expensive when it was new.

But all its former glory has long since faded. The staircase is now covered in filth, the paint is peeling off the walls, there are more parts exposing the plaster than what's still colored. As they make their way up to the apartment number from the note, the stairs creak under their weight, and between this and the last place Dean's wondering how long it's going to take him to get the smell of human desolation out of his nose.

He hates cities, both the bright, busy parts and these dump holes for people forgotten by the society that spewed them out and left them to rot.

They reach apartment No. 306, knock a few times, listen for noises inside, but there's nothing. Dean kicks down the door.

Inside, it's as rundown as in the hallways. Faded paint and wallpaper coming off the wall in stripes, no carpet on the floor, barely furnished. Crates stand in for tables and sideboards, buried under several blankets, there’s a sofa. Weak light from a half-veiled window illuminates the layers of dust, but most of the apartment is empty. The ceiling lights work when Sam finds the switch and turns them on despite cracks in the glass, and in their brassy light the place looks even worse.

It takes Dean a moment to realize what's odd about all this, but then it hits him: the smell isn't right. It doesn't smell as putrid as in the rest of the house—not like roses either, but the stink is covered by a layer of something that reminds him of cheap, scented detergent.

The apartment is big, four rooms and a door to a fifth, and when he pushes that open, he sees the reason for the considerably nice smell: the whole ceiling is covered in Little Tree-Air fresheners. It's a small room, nothing more than an anteroom to yet another, and the artificial flowery scent is almost like a punch in the face when he steps inside; these are fresh, either new or exchanged regularly, more care taken of them than anything else in this place.

"What the fuck?" says Sam, sniffing and making a face, and that kind of hits the nail on the head.

The door to the next is open just a crack, and as they approach it, Dean finally smells it; not the filth and the rot, but the sulfur. He has to stop, and it's Sam who steps forward past him and pushes the door open.

Long ago, when the building still held rich families, this might've been a maid's room. It's just big enough for someone to live in it, and there's a sink in one corner and a door leading to a tiny bathroom complete with a little figurine of a kid on the toilet.

Most of the space in the room is taken up by a simple, old bed. And there's someone lying on it, bound by wide leather straps on wrists and ankles, and above it the word SLOTH is smeared in what looks like long-since dried faeces.

Well, someone isn't quite the right word. The thing on the mattress had been a person at some point, but by now, it's more of a mummified corpse. It's haggard and parched and there are maggots crawling on its arms and legs; they've burnt bodies still in better shape than this one. Across its chest there's a faded burn mark, a symbol of some kind, somehow familiar -

"That's a seal, to bind a demon in its host body." Sam's barely finished the sentence when the thing starts to _move_. It trashes against its restraints, head rearing up, and makes a noise that's probably supposed to be a scream, but the cadaverous body doesn't produce much sound.

"Is it _alive_?"

Sam shrugs helplessly. "Looks like it?"

"What do we do?"

For a few moments, Sam doesn't reply, seems to mull their options over in his head. He sounds unsure when he says, "The merciful thing would be to let it out of the body. Right?"

"Free it? No, maybe it knows something."

"Dean, it can't even speak. What if the human in there is still along for the ride?"

Sam steps towards the bed, slices through the papery skin to break the seal. As soon as the knife bites into the scar, the body rears up one last time and the demon leaves it in a cloud of black smoke, escapes the way Dean and Sam came.

Then the empty shell falls back onto the mattress and Sam checks for a pulse, shakes his head. He looks relieved. "Demon trapping demon, that must be a first, huh?"

"You think that's what happened here?"

"Any other explanations?"

"I hate it when you answer a question with another question."

Dean grins in response, as smug and obnoxious as he can manage, and Sam flips him the bird. They both set out to search the room for clues.

On a stool by the end of the bed, in a shoebox, Dean finds a bunch of Polaroids. They're all dated, and looking through them is like a flip-book of the rotting of the body on the bed played backwards; the last one is more than a year old, and it shows a healthy young man.

"Found something?" Sam asks, and just as Dean wordlessly hands him the pictures in lieu of an answer, something else at the bottom of the shoebox catches his attention.

Hemmed in between the folds of the carton, there's a second envelope with his name on it.

***

On their way back down to the car Dean's white as a sheet, but he still refuses to tell Sam what's written on the notes or even admit that they are knocking him off his game, and Sam has to sit on his hands and bite his tongue to keep from bitching at him. Dean keeps insisting that the notes aren’t significant to the case itself, which is bull crap; if that were true, the demon wouldn't leave them in the first place.

But hey, Dean not telling him anything isn't exactly a new development.

The next address isn't far away, and they drive there in absolute silence, the pitter-patter of the rain on the roof and the windshield somehow louder and more prominent for it. Dean didn't even turn on the radio, had his hand hovering over the knob out of habit but withdrawing it with a shrug. Such a small thing, but Sam's seen that a lot lately: it's almost as if, little by little, the things that once mattered to his brother are losing importance. He simply doesn't care anymore, neither for his music or his food or the kind of women that used to draw his attention, nor about whether or not Sam notices.

Sam's wrested from his thoughts when Dean cuts the engine in front of another cheap apartment building. It's not as crappy as the last one—generic, maybe from the seventies, but in relatively good shape.

They just arrive at the door number stated on the note and give it a couple of token knocks when someone appears in the hallway. Seeing as they didn't do anything illegal yet, Sam just stays there, smiles and tries to look as innocent as possible while Dean stuffs the lock pick back into his pocket.

The person eyes them for a moment, head cocked to the side in consideration, then turns and books it down the stairs.

Both of them start almost at the same time, chase it or him (or it or whatever) back and forth through the corridors until Sam hears screaming from one of the apartments. He follows the noise, gun now cocked, finds an open door and the inhabitant standing in front of it, pointing inside.

She probably assumes he's a cop.

No one's in the room, but an open bathroom window and supplies scattered across the ground give Sam reason to believe that the thing flew out onto the fire ladder. And bingo, there it is, trip-running through the narrow space between the buildings and some kind of piping that probably belongs to the heating system. The distance between them is too big for Sam to catch up crawling through it, though, so he quickly looks to his left and right to orient himself before running out of the apartment and to a hallway window that allows him to jump directly onto the piping. That way, he hopes, he'll be able to move faster than the fleeting figure down on the ground.

Dean's not behind him anymore, but since the subject of their chase is in his direct line of sight, Sam doesn't take the time to worry about that. He runs as he sees it kicking in the window on the ground floor and jumping through it, follows it into the basement of the building, back up and out again onto the fire escape through another hallway window.

He reaches the window just in time to see it escape onto the street, and without thinking, he takes a swan dive into a heap of trash below the fire ladder's last step. The chase continues into a labyrinth of back alleys, and Sam's just slowing down to peek into a rundown truck left to rust in one of them when he gets hit on the head from above.

Disoriented for a moment, he tries to get his feet back under himself, and when he looks back up it's into the barrel of a gun. On the other end of it is a guy, smiling viciously and flashing black eyes at him.

Sam bites his lips in pain, blood running into his left eye from the head wound, he lost the gun when he fell, but his own survival isn't top priority right now anyway.

He stares right back into its face, tries to infuse as much venom and menace into the words as he can. "Leave my brother alone."

As if on cue, Dean's voice resounds from around the corner. He's yelling Sam's name.

The demon shakes its head slowly, winks at Sam, and disappears.

***

Despite the blow to the head, Sam insists they check the apartment out right now, before the thing can gather its wits and reappear. Dean tries to reason with him that nothing's going to keep the demon from coming back to the place while they're here, but it's a moot point.

"What' be so bad about that, huh?" replies Sam, fury and bloodlust in his eyes that Dean recognizes easily; after Dad died, he saw it in the mirror, every time before or after a hunt.

He's honestly not sure whether he's supposed to be proud or go a little crazy with worry, but it doesn't matter anyway; he's hasn't got the energy for either. “Fine,“ he replies, throwing his hand, and digs for the tools in his pocket.

Lock picking's a matter of seconds, and the door opens to a sparsely lit, mid-sized apartment. It's completely painted dark brown, the only things providing some light are some floor and wall lamps with old-fashioned shades and a few naked red light bulbs in the back. It looks like a mix of museum and the set of a skeevy televangelist. The former doesn't surprise Dean much, but the latter has him puzzled.

Last time he checked, demons weren't devout sorts, but this place is covered in crosses. Big, flashing neon ones on the wall over the bed, tiny scribbles of them all over the walls, crucifixes and different kinds of bibles lie around everywhere; some of them look old and expensive.

On the walls in the main room are showcases with seemingly random content. Old books with blood on the backs, a human hand conserved in a jar of formaldehyde, a photo of a woman and a man on the stairs of some building. One of them contains canned food, all the same sort: spaghetti, like the police found at the gluttony-scene.

Another wall has a long light box attached to it, like the ones hospitals use for their X-rays, but this one's used to pin newspaper clippings.

And there are bookshelves all over the place filled with all kinds of books. Some old, some new, and a lot of notebooks. The titles are in several different languages, among them Latin, and from what Dean can tell most are either religious or tacky pseudo-science. As he flips through a few of them, Sam waves at him. He's standing further into the back, where the red light bulbs are.

"Check this out," he says and points his flashlight to a couple of black and white photographs hanging from the ceiling.

The pictures show the victims before they died: the fat guy still eating, him being fed by the demon, the lawyer cutting himself and bleeding out onto the carpet and more of the demon that had been bound to the bed.

"I know, I've said this before, but that's one sick motherfucker. Even for a demon."

Instead of an answer, all he gets from Sam is an expression that's part scornful, part worried, part is-my-big-brother-really-that-stupid. Sam's stopped losing his professional distance to this case when they found the first note with Dean's name on it, and it's not like that fact has escaped Dean's attention. He just prefers to see it differently. The moment he admits this is real, this is happening, this is somehow aimed at him now, he's going to loose his grip and freak the fuck out.

And anyway, this last note didn't carry quite as much weight. "How long" is an easy enough question, and there’s not quite as much room for interpretation; he's still not looking forward to the next time he can't help but fall asleep, but how long his stint in hell lasted, how much time he spent on the rack and in front of it? Those are clear facts. Not much additional fodder for his fucked-up brain to throw at him at night.

So he rolls his eyes at Sam, handing out a scornful look of his own to inform Sam that he's taking all this way too serious and reaches out for one of the notebooks. "Do you think it wrote that?"

"Only one way to find out," says Sam and follows Dean's example, grabs a notebook himself.

The handwriting is scrawly and small, words pressed together to get as many of them onto a page as possible. It's hard to decipher at first, but when Dean finally manages to make sense of the scribblings, he almost drops the notebook like it just caught fire.

>   
>    
>  _bodies, an ocean of bodies, each of them screaming, none of them undamaged, blood like a river, everything burns, voices and eyes and hands, someone's always grabbing at you or cutting you or pulling you apart, make it stop, Lord, why am I here, I don't belong, PLEASE PLEASE, his face, eyes red and white and glowing and he's snarling, never hurting me but always watching, always, they say he's the one who decides it all, who cuts whom and when and how and he saves his efforts for the special ones, the chosen ones, those who matter but I don't, Lord, all I ever did was strive for your heaven_

Hell. Alastair. Dean knows what that thing's talking about, has his own Technicolor, surround-sound memories to match these descriptions. Minus the praying. He closes his eyes, counts to ten in his mind and focuses on not letting his breathing speed up, or Sam will notice -

"Woah, what the fuck is that shit?" Sam snaps his notebook shut emphatically and shudders.

Dean tries for a non-committal shrug. "Dunno, demon dream diary?"

"Just dreams, huh? Kinda like yours?"

Before Dean can think of a comeback, they're interrupted by a knock on the door, followed by a tentative "Hey man, everything alright in there?"

Getting out of here isn't an option, and ignorance is a bit of a risky course of action if someone saw them entering. Dean points to his jacket pocket where they both keep their badges and glances questioningly at Sam, who nods and starts towards the door.

"Everything's fine, please stay back." Sam opens the door and flashes that reassuring, calming smile of his at the beer-bellied guy in a wife-beater standing in front of it, waves his badge. "Search of premises on the basis of exigent circumstances. Who are you?"

Claiming everything's a-okay and then referring to exigent circumstances is a contradiction, but the guy's too perplexed to notice. "Uh, this is my building. Any trouble here?"

"Not here, the tenant of this apartment is a suspect. Is there anything you can tell us about him?"

"Not really, dude keeps to himself. But as long as they pay the rent on time and nothing smells funny, I don't ask too many questions, you know?"

Sam nods. "In that case, sir, I have to ask you to leave so we can continue our search."

As soon as the door is closed, Sam lets out a breath. "What do you say, let's get out of here?"

Dean can't say he's not a fan of the idea, and not only because they got interrupted; the more space he can put between himself and those notebooks and Sam's inquiries, the better. "Yeah, let's go."

***

Jonah was born in Avignon in the late 16th century and raised by rich and God-fearing parents. He became a servant of the Lord, made his way up the ranks, came to Rome, and ended up as a cardinal. As such, he got appointed into the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition.

Yes, that one. The Roman Inquisition.

Upon the decisions these men and those who preceded and followed them made, thousands were brutally tortured and killed in the name of God. While they did so, they believed themselves to be carrying out His will.

They weren't.

That's why, at the end of his life on earth, Jonah found himself not in Heaven but in the bottomless pit of Hell. Imagine his surprise.

After he made his way out, Jonah barely remembered his name, where he came from or what he did during his life on earth. If you'd shown him pictures of his parents or even the pope he used to serve, he wouldn't know who they were; they'd mean nothing to him.

But Hell couldn't erase his faith. Jonah crawled out of the pit as a demon with the devotion and moral values of a churchman in the late Middle Ages, and understandably enough, that screwed with his head. All he clearly remembers is that there's evil in the world, sin and impiety, and it's his job is to eradicate it.

***

These days, Sam rarely wakes up in the morning to find his brother still asleep. Today's an exception; Dean's lying on the other bed, fully clothed with the remote control still half in his hand. Sam assumes he'd been awake most of the night and then, finally, nodded off.

The sounds his brother makes remind him of why Dean rarely sleeps anymore, unless his body pulls the brakes on him. Barely audible whimpers take turns with incoherent begging for whatever he dreams about to stop; his breathing speeds up, goes ragged, and Sam debates with himself whether it's a good idea to let him sleep. Chances are Dean will be pissed when he wakes up on his own.

But he also needs _some_ sleep every once in a while, so Sam takes one last, lingering look at him and gets up. Unless Dean moves on to screaming, Sam's not going to rouse him.

He goes about his morning routine quietly, gets dressed, considers going out to get breakfast but decides against it. Dean's not going to eat much anyway, and staying here, being able to step in when the dreams get too much, is more important. And while Sam's somewhat hungry himself, there are some chocolate bars and beef jerky in a bag in the car and that'll have to do.

Stretching and yawning, Sam steps out of the door. It's cold and drizzling and he hurries to get to the car and back, so he doesn't see the envelope lying on their doormat until he approaches the door again.

Like back at the crime scenes, Dean's name is written on it.

Horrified, Sam practically runs the last few meters, picks up the envelope and closes the door behind him. His eyes search the room frantically, and just like that Sam's grateful for Dean's whimpering and silent cries; at least they instantly assure Sam that he's still alive and unharmed.

After a quick search around the room and the bathroom, re-doing the salt lines while he's at it, Sam sits down on his bed and stares at the bright white rectangle of the envelope. Fear and rage crawl up his spine. Whoever dropped it is long gone, but the fact that it's been left here means the demon knows where they are. He feels exposed, like they're stuck in the spotlight; insects being watched through the looking glass.

And then, his thoughts circle to something else. Dean still hasn't told him about the additional notes, and here lies another one. Sam's almost sure that it's going to contain another address, and a third note for Dean.

Slowly, eyes on his brother's sleeping form, Sam reaches for the envelope. It's not sealed; Dean won't know whether Sam read it or not. He might even suspect that Sam did, so what's the harm?

He's right; the first sheet of paper has another address scribbled on it, with a time as well - 11 pm. the same day - and the order to be punctual.

The note on the second one is way shorter than Sam suspected. "How often?" is all it says.

In the other bed, Dean stirs, and Sam has barely enough time to put the envelope's contents back and blindly throw it onto the bed before his brother shoots up, gasping and hurriedly wiping tears out of the corners of his eyes.

Sam looks away to spare Dean the humiliation of being caught crying, however justified it might've been. "We, uh, had a visitor," he stutters, picks the envelope up and holds it up for Dean to see.

It obviously takes Dean's sleep-fuzzy mind a moment to put two and two together, to recognize the envelope and connect it with what Sam said. "It's been _here_?" His expression turns aghast. He sits up, swings his legs off the bed and leans forward to grip Sam's shoulder. "Sammy, you okay?"

"What? No. No, Dean, I'm fine. I found the envelope when I got up this morning, left on our doormat."

Dean's eyes flicker from Sam to the envelope and back. "You didn't see the demon?"

"No. I went out to get something from the car, and it was on our doorstep, no one in sight. You think the bastard followed us here?"

"Must have," Dean says and reaches for the envelope, opens it and reads both notes.

Of course he only hands the note with the address to Sam, and Sam pretends to read it as if it's the first time he sees it.

They have a heated discussion about whether to stay put or move out and get a room in a different motel way across the city; unsurprisingly, Dean is the one who argues that they stay, giving his martyr complex full reign.

"Sam, it's communicating with us. What if it makes a run for it if we move, huh? What if we lose it? You wanna wait for a blood trail to find it again?" He stares at Sam, eyebrows raised, challenging, and Sam wants to throttle him.

"No, man, it's communicating with _you_. Targeting you, and I wanna be long gone when it decides that letters don't cut it anymore." Dean answers by rolling his eyes and Sam balls his fists by his side to keep from yelling, with little success. "I'm just trying to keep you safe, you moron!"

"Yeah, newsflash, the job ain't about keeping the _hunter_ safe." Dean's tone is calm, he even manages to sound a bit amused. "Not gonna go anywhere."

Instead of a reply - Dean's not going to change his mind anyway - Sam goes for the duffel bag containing their weapons and the journal.

"What are you doing?"

"Putting up a Devil's Trap and a few protective charms. Will you at least let me do that?"

Dean lets him, and they spend the rest of the day seething at each other. While Sam goes through the files and their own notes over and over again, trying to make some kind of sense of it all and predict the demon's next move, Dean makes a show of doing absolutely nothing.

“You know, I thought Dad taught us better than sitting on a platter and baring our necks for the thing,” he jabs eventually.

“Don't _you_ get me started about what he'd do,” is all the response Dean gives; he turns the volume of the TV up make it clear that he isn't going to have whatever conversation Sam wants to trigger.

By the time they get going to the address on the note, Sam's so annoyed he's about to burst with it. Something deep inside of him chides him for that, reminding him that the last thing Dean needs right now is them fighting or Sam's anger, but he can't help it.

He's angry with himself, he's angry with Dean, he's fucking furious on Dean's behalf, and he can't stop poring over the note's meaning. How often—what kind of cryptic bullshit is that?

And Dean, apparently, doesn't feel much of anything. He doesn't even light up at the sight that presents itself to them when they arrive at the address: it's a night club of the adult sort, aggressive red and golden neon signs advertise "hot and dirty" women, further punctuated by a blinking set of neon tits.

Two years ago, Dean's face would've lit up like a Christmas tree, dirty jokes spilling out before he could put a lid on it. But today, all he has to say on the matter is "Look at that, is the thing tryin' to hook us up?"

Sam shrugs in reply, gets out of the car and walks up toward the entrance. There's music playing, loud, some kind of industrial rock if his college years have taught him anything.

Dean follows. "Should we go inside? I mean, won't be happenin' much out here, right?" He doesn't wait for an answer, walks up to entrance of the club regardless of whether Sam catches up or not.

Apparently the term "underground club" is taken literally here; upon entering they're greeted by a wide stairway leading downwards, graffiti paintings all over the wall, the whole establishment bathed in red light. There's no dance floor, but a long hallway full of nooks and crannies, a wooden door to a separate room every few steps.

Not hard to imagine what's going on in each of those rooms.

Sam's just about to call foul on this one when Dean grabs his arm to stop him, points towards a door to their left. "Looks like we have a winner."

The word LUST is carved into it in big letters, and it's left ajar. Dean carefully nudges it open some more, and the room behind it is sparely lit by the same red light, decorated with curtains of an unidentifiable color on one wall, empty except for an old, ornate king-size metal bed on the wall opposite the door. On it, there's a guy kneeling, sobbing loudly, and a woman lying next to him. He's facing the wall so he can't see them; she leans onto the head board, legs spread wide, knees bent, and she'd be looking right at them.

But she's dead. Her lower body is a bloody mess, torn apart, none of the anatomical details recognizable anymore. It's like someone took a knife and repeatedly... fucked it into her, for lack of a better term. Despite having been turned off praying recently, Sam sends a plea to the man upstairs that she'd been dead when that happened, but he doubts it.

Beside him, Dean takes in a sharp breath and turns. Before Sam knows what's happening, he's running back the way they came, pushing people out of the way and hissing at them to let him through. Sam doesn't think twice, goes after him without sparing the horrendous scene in the room another look, but he doesn't catch up with him until they're out of the building.

And when he does, he stays back. Dean's leaning on the outer wall of the night club with one arm, bent forward, emptying his stomach onto the pavement, and somehow that image cuts Sam deeper than anything he's seen the past few days.

Dean's been hunting since he was a teenager, and sure, Sam hasn't been there for all of it, but he's never seen his brother react this way. Not even close. A suppressed gag, a disgusted scrunch of the nose, yes, never _this_.

 _How often?_ Sam's actively trying not to think about what that means anymore.

**

That night, Dean stays up on purpose. He waits until Sam falls asleep, then sits down by the window and watches what's happening outside the door.

If the demon left them a note once, chances are there'll be another; this time he's going to catch it red-handed.

And indeed, shortly after 2:30 a. m., a figure makes its way up to their room in the dark. Dean opens the door silently, room as dark as the parking lot, and manages to overpower it effortlessly. The fact that he's able to do that without running into much resistance irks him, and when the kid - really, not much older than 18 - starts screaming and begging for his life, he's not quite sure whether it's a show or not.

By now, Sam's up as well, shooting him dark looks for doing this alone, and between the two of them they maneuver their secret mailman into the room. Sam talks him down, offers him a drink that he spikes with holy water, and Dean'd been right: no reaction at all.

Not the demon, just a stoned kid that swears up and down he's just been trying to make a quick 50 bucks by delivering the envelope.

***

Compared to the night club the next crime scene looks almost harmless. The demon's back to adding a psychological note, a deeper meaning, doing a number on the victim's mind before making it kill itself.

Fucking creep.

It also raised the standard again; expensive neighborhood, pricey old building. Once more they're the first on the scene, no police in sight yet, and Dean can practically smell the fresh blood underneath a thick stink of sulfur. If he touched the victim, she'd still be warm, he's sure.

She's laid on her bed, her face wrapped in a blood-soaked bandage, and it takes him a moment to notice what's wrong with it. What's missing, to be exact; the demon cut off her nose. In one hand, she holds a phone; in the other, she holds a box of pills. There's a bloody trail leading from the bed to the bathroom - or the other way around, Dean assumes.

Above the bed, the word PRIDE is smeared onto the wall with her blood, and next to her a framed photo of herself is propped up on the pillows.

"This doesn't add up." Sam, all thoughtful, rounds the bed to look at the description of the pills, pries her finger out of the way with a gloved hand. "I don't think she lost enough blood to die from it."

"Shock, maybe?"

He shakes his head. "No, I don't think so. These are sleeping pills."

"You mean, she took 'em? Why'd she do that? She had the phone right here, could've called help."

Sam points to the picture, then to her bandaged face. "The nose. She would've been disfigured. Looks like it gave her a choice: call help or commit suicide."

"Pride."

"Yep."

A police siren blaring nearby ends their inspection of the room, and on the way out, Dean reaches into his pocket and scrunches up the personal note the demon left for him this time. Only one word: _Why?_

It can't mean the reason Dean went to hell, the story of his deal is probably something demons tell each other over their after-work beers.

Why pick up the knife, maybe. Or why not, for so long? A demon on a killing spree wouldn't understand that. Some days, Dean doesn't quite understand it himself.

But there's no way of knowing what the fucking thing means, Dean scrambling his brain to answer those questions is exactly what it wants, and that's enough reason for him to stop doing that. Bad enough that they can't get a hold of it, are left to play its game, but it's not going to render him useless by taunting him with a few scribbles.

***

Jonah's smiling to himself as he sets everything up for the big day ahead of him. The table, the tools, it's all there, just waiting to be put to good use.

No more kidding around, he's decided. The time for teasing and probing is over. There's a carefully designed plan, and the Winchesters are just what Jonah's been waiting for to complete his work. Fate, that's what this is. Things are falling into place, as they should be.

***

The next morning, Dean almost expects another note when he steps outside to get them breakfast. It should bother him more, the demon knowing where they hole up, sleep, are vulnerable, but he's too exhausted to be afraid.

And there's only one of them who really sleeps at night, anyway.

There's no note on the doormat, but when Dean peeks around the corner to check if his baby is still safely parked in the motel's lot, he almost stumbles over someone sitting next to their door. Black eyes flash at him, and he's got no doubt about who the unexpected visitor is.

"Hey Dean," it says, expression cold and motionless like a statue.

For just a short moment, Dean's too stunned to react, too baffled by the sheer audacity and arrogance of the thing; sending teens to leave envelopes at night is one thing, but showing up itself goes far beyond that, assumes they're easy prey.

It uses that moment to pin him to the door frame, push past him and casually stroll inside.  
"Sam?" it says into the empty room, looks around.

Of course, Sam has to scuff out of the bathroom just that second, toothbrush still in his mouth. The demon takes hold of him immediately, pins him to the wall next to the bathroom door and releases Dean in turn, points at him. "Don't do anything stupid. I'm not here to harm him."

"No, of course not. Wouldn't dream of that, would ya?"

"Only if you make me. I'm merely here to make a suggestion." It strolls into the room, sidestepping the rug with the Devil's Trap Sam's drawn underneath, sits down on Dean's still unmade bed and smoothes out the covers within its reach. So sure of itself, in no hurry, completely unfazed. "As you might have noticed, my work is not completed yet."

"Five sins down, two to go."

The thing nods. "Exactly. Both sinners have been prepared and are to die today. Unless you," it looks at Dean, "agree to come with me in their place."

"No, fuck you!"

"Shut it, Sam," Dean says, holds a hand up, eyes never leaving the demon. He does his best to match its attitude, be defiant and appear fearless; this isn't his first stand-off with a demon and it won't be his last. "Come with you where?"

"Does it matter, Dean? It's either you or two innocent people. Well. Innocent by your standard, but each guilty of a sin."

“Ah. And what's going to happen then? You think I'm stupid enough to think you'll just let them go?”

The demon smiles, almost sympathetic. “Okay, let me make this easy for you. One of you is going to come with me. You can come willingly, or I can take your brother by force.” It glances at Sam. “Since I don't think he'd be able to see reason, here. But you do, Dean, don't you?”

To underline its statement, it closes an invisible hand around Sam's throat, squeezes just enough that he has to choke for air.

And just like that, the stakes are raised higher than Dean can bear. Defiance is out of question now, so is refusal. Dean makes a fist by his side, presses his nails into his palm until it hurts, a short, sharp pain. He looks at Sam, searches his eyes, tries to convey an apology as well as all the confidence he has that his brother will find him; they always find each other. "Yes. Yeah, I'll go with you."

 _"No!"_ Sam shouts, panicky, eyes going wide and a little wild. He thrashes against the demon's power holding him to the wall.

With a flick of his wrist, the demon bangs Sam's head against the wall, and Sam sinks to the floor as it releases its hold.

It smiles at Dean, gestures to the open door, and follows him when he heads for the car.

***

When Sam comes to, he's alone. No Dean, no demon, no car in the parking lot. He rounds the building to see if the car is parked elsewhere, searches the room for clues hoping that this time, there's a note for _him_ , calls Dean's cell five times in as many minutes, but there's no clue as to where they disappeared.

And fuck, this can't be happening. He can't be gone.

A small yet insistent voice in the back of Sam's mind tries to talk him into just sitting down and starring at the wall until Dean walks back into the room of his own accord; he's still so raw inside, the memory of Dean being _gone_ still so fresh, and the fear of losing his brother again threatens to overwhelm him.

But that won't happen. This one's all on Sam, and what he needs is a plan.

He allows himself is a minute of slowing down, sitting on the bed with his face in his hands and trying hard not to cry. Panic won't do him any good.

Then, he exhales, a slow and steady blowout of air meant to ground him, and pushes off the bed. His first thought is to call Bobby, but he's stuck a few states over and hours away.

Dean probably doesn't have hours.

***

Dean's eyes fly open, and he can't help but cry out when a knife cuts into his side. Not very deep, just barely drawing blood, but it's not the pain that throws him into panic the moment he realizes what's happening.

He's strapped down on a metal table, restrained by his wrists and ankles, while someone's _cutting into him_. For a moment, the line between present and memory blurs, and he can practically feel Hell around him; the cacophony of screams in his ears, far and near and everywhere, the stench of sulfur underlined with the metallic notion of blood, so much of it that you can smell and taste it, the faint reek of fire and burned flesh.

Another cut and his mind snaps back to reality. Not Hell. He's out, he's back on earth, he's alive.

"You're everyone's favorite pet. Hell, Heaven, everyone wants a piece of you. Why do you think that is? What's so special about you?"

Dean doesn't immediately recognize the voice, and he blinks, tries to get his eyes to focus so he has a picture to go with it.

"I'm going to find out. Cut the reason out of you if I have to, lay you bare, open you up and take a look inside."

Yet another cut and Dean realizes that his clothes are being cut off, knife digging in deeper to break the skin as well, and he lets himself fall into the pain. He's had so much worse, but the _way_ it hurts, real and earthbound, keeps his mind in the here and now, throws everything into sharp relief. His mind doesn't fog because of it; it becomes clearer, and he remembers. "There have never been any other victims held captive, right?"

"No, just you."

Somewhere to his left, Dean hears a syringe being filled, the faint hiss as the air is pushed out of it. A pinprick into his arm, and his world goes black.

 

***

A plan is what Sam needs, but it's difficult to come up with anything useful. They don't know enough about the demon to predict what it's going to do, where it'll take Dean. It's unlikely that it's going to revisit any of the other crime scenes, and the only place Sam can connect to it is the apartment.

Sam doubts that it's going to bring Dean there, but he decides to go back to see if he can find clues as to where the demon did take his brother; it's as good a place to start looking as any. His search doesn't have any rhyme or reason, he just randomly opens drawers, pushes things around, and almost pukes onto the floor as he finds a box with an assortment of archaic-looking old knifes, pins, hooks and pincers. What's here in the apartment can't hurt his brother, he tells himself.

Just as he contemplates reading more of those notebooks to see if he can get something useful out of them, there's a knock on the door.

He ignores it at first, but after the third time he stalks toward the door, furious, and wrenches it open. Behind it, the landlord they met when they first searched the apartment takes a surprised step back.

"Oh, you're here again, Agent?" he asks, scratches his belly. "What a coincidence, I have something for you. Wait a sec, will you?"

Sam nods, and the guy disappears down the hallway. Three minutes later, he returns, holding one of the well-known envelopes. "He left this for you. Gave me fifty bucks and asked me to swing by sometime tomorrow to hand it over, but now that you're here, I might as well save myself the way, right?"

"Yes, uhm. Yeah. Thanks," Sam stammers and throws the door into the landlord's face, ignoring the mumbled obscenities criticizing his manners.

His hands are suddenly shaking, from rage and fear both, and his heartbeat is ringing loudly in his ears. Sam leans against the wall and opens the envelope.

It contains a single note, just an address this time.

***

The demon gives a constant monologue, but in his drugged state, Dean can't decipher much of what it says. What little he understands doesn't make much sense to him.

Instead, he concentrates on the music playing in the background. It's some whiny soul and jazz from the sixties, and he remembers a few of the more popular songs.

Mom used to listen to that shit. Dad too, when he was in one of his moods.

Dean's lips move to whisper the lyrics whenever he recalls them, _you stopped and smiled at me, asked me if I'd care to dance, I feel into your open arms_ or _sometimes baby I'm so carefree, with a joy that's hard to hide, and then sometimes it seems again that all I have is worry_. Sappy nonsense he normally wouldn't be caught dead singing along to, but it beats focusing on the cuts and the pinches and the smell of his own burnt flesh filling the air.

The music is also what keeps him from slipping into memories, getting past and present confused. In Hell, there was no music, apart from his own humming or the melodies he remembered, tried to conjure up in his head as an escape, much like right now. So if there's music playing, real music and songs he doesn't know very well or not at all, he can't be back there.

Yeah, he's topside, but there's still a demon towering over him while he's bound and defenseless. It holds up a dagger that's been heated up until it's red-hot, directly in Dean's line of sight so he can't help but wonder what it's going to be used for, and suddenly there isn't much of a difference between Hell and earth anymore.

A second injection puts him under even deeper, maybe the demon's gotten tired of his whispering and whimpers, and Dean welcomes the darkness closing in around him.

***

The drive to the address on the note is short, but to Sam it might as well have taken hours. Each time they drove up to one of these places the past few days, they came to find a dead body. He can't think about anything else than Dean, dead weight in his arms just a few months ago, eyes lifeless and empty. About burying his brother. About being alone and out of his head with grief while Dean was downstairs, tortured and kill over and over.

He can't go through that again. Neither of them can. And they won't have to.

With his heart almost beating out of his chest, Sam gets out of the stolen car, knife in his hand and ready. It's a warehouse, old and battered and if Sam didn't know better he would've sworn it was abandoned.

It doesn't take him long to get inside; the door isn't very well secured. The first room is vacant, a few machines to produce fuck knows what stand around unused, and no one's in sight. But he can hear voices somewhere in the back, underlined by music played on low volume.

Sam allows himself a brief moment of hope, dares to think that Dean's got the situation under control and nothing bad happened; futile, as it turns out when he listens in closer. It's just one voice. The second person doesn't talk, just gives out a constant stream of familiar sounding whimpers.

That's his brother, unmistakably, and he's hurting.

Sam grips the handle of the knife tighter, tiptoes towards the opaque, acrylic glass of the door to the second section and peers through it.

And there's Dean, bound to a metal table, barely conscious. He's bleeding, enough that it's dripping onto the metal and forming small puddles, and Sam has to look away, knows that he can't worry about the extent of the damage if he wants to retain any sort of composure.

Gripping the door handle carefully and turning it down slowly to avoid making noise, he pushes it open. But apart from the table Dean's on and a second, smaller one holding - _shit_ \- an array of instruments like the assortment in the apartment, the room's all open space, no way to hide. As soon as he's in the room, he's going to be seen.

But this is just one demon, Sam has the knife and a selection of exorcism rites memorized, ready at any time. He can do this.

Holding the knife behind his back, Sam enters the room.

The demon doesn't look up from whatever he's doing to Dean, gives a slightly displeased sigh. "You're too early. Tomorrow, you weren't supposed to come here before tomorrow."

"Step away from him."

It ignores him, but its forehead wrinkles in thought. "Well, it's okay. Not perfect, but it will do."

"What are you talking about?"

"My work. Don't you see?” It gestures between itself, Sam, and Dean on the table. “The two remaining sins."

Sam can't help but follow the motion when it encompasses Dean, but averts his eyes as quickly as he can. Not helping. "The only sinner I can see in this room is you."

"Really? You're trembling with rage, Sam." Finally, it takes a single step back from the table and turns towards Sam, waving a crooked dagger with Dean's blood still dripping from its tip. "But you're right, I am a sinner, too. I am the final sin, I complete the circle."

"You're _insane_."

"Envy. I'm so envious of him." It turns back to gaze at Dean. "I was sent to hell, left to rot there, and God goes and saves _him_? He didn't deserve that. I did!"

"Shut up and step away from him. I won't say it again."

The demon smiles. "Look at you, playing the role you've been assigned so perfectly well." Another step; he's almost within Sam's reach now, and Sam himself makes half a step back in hopes to make it follow; a twisted game of chicken. "What are you going to do, send me back to damnation?"

It works. Still waving the dagger - like a teacher, using a pointer to punctuate his words - the demon follows him, unconsciously, as if led by a length of rope.

“Is that what I'm supposed to do?" Now it's Sam who's stepping forward, turning the handle of the knife in his grip. _So close._

"Ah, so impatient." It looks back at Dean once more, and Sam can see the corners of its mouth curl up in an even wider grin. "Not until he's dead."

And that's it. Throwing caution and any pretense of tactic into the wind, Sam leaps forward, hauls the demon away from the table as soon as he's got a grip on it with one hand and pushes the knife into its stomach with the other.

***

Dean's vaguely aware of getting back to the motel and being settled into bed, but he blacks out when Sam begins to stitch him up.

When he wakes the next time, it's night. The room is pitch-black, Sam's laptop screen the only thing that's faintly illuminating it, and Dean's mind takes a few seconds to make sense of it all. Images blend together in his head, the hunt, Hell, being taken and the demon -

_The demon._

"Is it dead?"

Sam turns around slowly. "That's the first thing to pop into your head after being out of it for more than a day?"

"More than a day?" Dean tries to sit upright, swears under his breath when his body rewards the movement with jabs of pain from various sources.

"The drugs took some time to get out of your system, I guess? It knocked you flat out, and everything else, uh. I would've brought you to an ER, but, you know. Kinda hard to explain." Sam stands up, comes over to the bed to sit on the edge. "But yeah. It's dead. Killed it and saved your ass, big bro." He grins, but there's no real humor in it. "When I saw you on that table, for a moment there, I thought I'd lost you. Again."

"Sam, I'm sorry." Dean's not sure what he means by that, present, past or maybe even future, but he feels like he needs to say it. His memory of what happened in the warehouse is fuzzy at best, but one image is clear in his mind: Sam, closing in to the demon and holding up the knife with an expression that was dangerously close to joy and satisfaction.

Dean did that. Whatever happened to turn his emo, feel-the-world's-pain baby brother into something that enjoys stabbing monsters, it happened while Dean was in hell.

"What for, exactly?" Sam asks, huffs, gets off the bed, and Dean flinches back at his caustic tone, causing Sam to avert his eyes. When he can look Dean in the face again, he’s glaring. "Offering yourself up to that thing? Refusing to leave, or at least let me help you, protect you? Putting your life on the line, willingly, after you just got it back? Are you suicidal now?"

"Bull. You know that wasn't, like, attempted suicide by demon."

"How, Dean? How am I supposed to know anything if you won't talk to me?" He flops back down onto the bed, jumps a little as Dean hisses in pain from the movement reverberating into his body. When he continues to speak, his voice is strained, low, and incredibly sad. "Why won't you tell me?"

"Sam -"

"The notes it added for you, they were referring to hell, weren't they?" Still with that small voice, and he's really gotta knock that off or Dean's going to tell him everything just so he doesn't have to sound like that; it's not fair, it’s playing dirty pool.

"Yes, they did."

Thankfully, that's enough to remind Sam of his hatred towards the demon, and he's back to almost-shouting when he drills ahead. "What did they say?"

"Sam, _please_." Dean turns his head away, burrows it into the pillow.

But Sam's not swayed. "I can't help you if you refuse to talk about it."

"You can't help me, period."

"Try me."

"I can't... I told you, there aren't even _words_. You wouldn't get it."

The battle between pressing the issue now that Dean can't run from him or giving him time to rest is obvious on Sam's face, but there's enough classic Sam left to stop pushing and let him off the hook. "This conversation isn't over, alright?" he says and gets up, wipes non-existent sweat off his hands on his jeans. "Go back to sleep, I'll fix you soup or something and wake you up when it's done." At Dean's groan, he adds, "Don't even try to argue, you lost a lot of blood. If we can't get you to a hospital, I'll at least get some food in you."

As he listens to Sam rummaging around in the kitchenette, Dean stares up at the ceiling, willing his mind to stay blank. He's unsure if he wants to fall asleep to hide from his brother or stay awake to hide from his memories, and the smell of whatever broth Sam's cooking up makes him nauseous.

Eventually, his body makes the decision for him and he dozes off into a light, dreamless sleep.


End file.
